Unforgiven

When the bottle stands between us

half empty, and the moon's stumbled off

somewhere, Margaret has the habit of releasing

words that sound like truth and are just as useless.

Like the night she goes, Please never forgive me

for my mistakes, because who would I become

if forgiven? I need this guilt like I need a knife

on the neck of my impulses. I laugh and say, but

I've already forgiven you. All those afternoons you

screwed Lawrence and sometimes James by mistake

while I was out hanging drywall, I've let it go. She's all

You're one to talk, you little fuck. Pour me

another. It's summertime in St. Louis and we lie

in vinyl lounge chairs under a sodium sky, slowly

killing the bottle, waiting side-by-side for something

unspecified to come replace the moon. Nothing does.